Okay, at mid-season, who thought that Fernando Alonso would be leading the world driver’s championship with two races left to run? At that time, a McLaren or a Red Bull was the car to have and Ferrari looked to be out of the picture.

But while Ferrari put all of its (considerable) resources behind Alonso as long ago as July because his teammate Felipe Massa was effectively out of the title race, McLaren and Red Bull have allowed their drivers to compete against each other. In the case of Red Bull, particularly, they should have told Sebastian Vettel to play backup to Mark Webber a couple of races ago: If Vettel had been playing wingman to Webber in the appalling conditions in this past weekend’s Korean GP, perhaps the Australian wouldn’t have spun out and Red Bull would be in the box-seat for the driver’s title.

The last two races are certainly on tracks that suit the RB6 chassis, but Alonso has a good chance of winning the title. If that happens, will McLaren and Red Bull take a more strategic approach in the future and designate one of its drivers as favored earlier in the season? While team orders are a dirty term in F1 these days, they have always been a factor in motor racing—just look at 1973, for instance, when Ronnie Peterson and Emerson Fittipaldi contrived to take points off each other all season long for Lotus while Jackie Stewart had number-two driver Francois Cevert dutifully cruise around behind him. Net result: the Scot’s third world title for Tyrrell.

On another topic, ex-F1 driver and ex—Red Bull advisor Gerhard Berger suggested that Webber tried to take out one of his title rivals—either Alonso or McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton—once he had spun out in Korea on the basis that it would help his own chances. The theory was that once he had hit the wall on the inside, Webber should have applied the brakes to avoid running back across the track. But Webber clouted the wall quite hard, so perhaps his stricken car didn’t have any brakes. And even if he did, why would a driver risk getting hit head-on by another speeding car? Your chances of taking a title are considerably diminished if you fracture an ankle or a leg with two races to go in the season.

Over in NASCAR, the Martinsville race was more entertaining than most of the races in the fatuous Chase for the Cup, basically because short tracks are better than cookie-cutter 1.5- and 2-mile ovals. The most interesting aspect was how Mark Martin’s crash-damaged car became an absolute rocket because its rear-end aerodynamics were modified courtesy of an A.J. Allmendinger hit. Seeing this, one wonders how many drivers will position their cars for a perfect rear-end hit on short tracks in the future.

Here’s Volkswagen’s American dilemma: Fans like the way the brand’s cars are more expensively engineered than their mainstream rivals, but it’s difficult to shift Jettas in the same quantities as Civics and Corollas when the cars cost more—to both VW and the customer. Because the corporate bosses in Wolfsburg, Germany, want the North American arm to sell a lot more cars, quickly—the stated aim being to triple sales by 2018—they’ve forged ahead with a new factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and tailored the new Jetta to the U.S. market.

In Europe, where the price of gasoline roughly mirrors that of champagne, compact luxury cars are one of the biggest segments of the market. In the U.S., however, the Audi A3, BMW 1-series, and Volvo C30 will be lucky to break 23,000 combined sales in 2010. Lexus’s goal in the U.S. is to move 1000 CT200hs a month, thereby increasing sales in the compact luxury segment by more than half. READ MORE ››

Road to Oblivion: The hill-climb up Nevada State Route 341 looked risky. We would learn just how risky it could be.

Nevada State Route 341 winds up the side of a mountain leading to Virginia City—a historic mining town southeast of Reno—climbing from a valley floor at 5000 feet to 6200 feet. The road was constructed to bypass SR 342, which connects Silver City with Virginia City. It’s as scary a piece of blacktop as you will find anywhere.

The 2008–2010 Subaru WRX STI was something of an enigma, a bit like people who enjoy eating headcheese. Whereas that car’s predecessor offered buyers a rawer-edged, faster version of the WRX, with more extreme rally-car looks tossed in to boot, the follow-up was a real disappointment, suffering from vague steering and being slower off the line than the base WRX. It, unlike the first STI, was not worth any portion of its several-thousand-dollar price premium.

Despite a busy weekend of North American racing, I was more excited by what’s happening next weekend in Formula 1. The world championship is coming to a head, with just four races to go—and the next one is the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, one of those places where F1 cars get to stretch their legs and burst their lungs.

At the moment, you’d think that championship leader Mark Webber is in the box seat, because his Red Bull chassis is the tool to have on fast, aero-dependent circuits. But the momentum seems to have swung towards Ferrari, with Fernando Alonso having won the last two grands prix. And the Ferrari appears to be strong on all types of track. Everyone seemed outraged when Felipe Massa ceded his position to Alonso in the German GP so that the Spaniard could maximize his points haul, but it has certainly helped increase the excitement in the title race.

It seems that Lewis Hamilton has blown his chances of winning the title, thanks to the impetuosity that also makes him such a thrill to watch. As Nigel Roebuck, editor-in-chief of Motor Sport (my second-favorite magazine) observes, Hamilton reminds him of Gilles Villeneuve. The French-Canadian was my hero, a driver who put it all on the line, to whom championships were not that important. Like Sir Stirling Moss, another of my heroes, Villeneuve wanted to win races rather than trundle around in second or third to garner points.

It’s funny that my son worships Hamilton in the way I did Villeneuve when he was racing. Villeneuve drove crappy Ferraris on the ragged edge, sliding ground-effects cars when it wasn’t the thing to do, a bit like Hamilton in a modern grand prix car. Like Villeneuve, Hamilton also makes seemingly dumb mistakes because he’s pushing so hard all the time. After a sublime drive at Spa, he inexplicably rammed Massa’s Ferrari at Monza and then hit Mark Webber in Singapore when he thought he saw a chance to pass after a safety-car period. Last year at Monza he went off at the Lesmos corners, trying a bit too hard to close the gap to second rather than settle for a safe third. The racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, another of my heroes, would have applauded that spirit.

To the purist—and to the person who tries their hand at racing—the smooth, subtle skills of a Jenson Button or an Alain Prost or a Niki Lauda are admirable and may be more difficult to achieve than relying on raw speed, like the Hamiltons, Villeneuves, Sennas, and Ronnie Petersons of this world. To the casual enthusiast, though, real racers will always be more entertaining, the reason you turn on the TV to waste a couple of hours.

I still enjoy wasting my time watching IndyCar racing on TV, but I’m in a shrinking minority. The cars look great, the racing’s close, and there are some genuinely exciting drivers out there, yet no one cares. It’s also a really difficult series to win because it combines differing types of ovals with street and road courses. I was pleased to see that Dario Franchitti, who took his third title in four years, was highlighted on the front page of USA Today’s sports section. But just imagine how much more attention the highly personable Scot would have gained if his abortive NASCAR career had panned out.

Nissan calls the Townpod concept a passenger car with the practicality of a light commercial van. The company’s chief designer Shiro Nakamura says the ‘pod is a pure concept, hinting at how the Cube could further evolve in the future. It features suicide doors and a split tailgate, as well as a rear seat that folds and slides into the front chairs to maximize load space. It’s a tall vehicle, capable of swallowing a lot of cargo.

The interior is simple and clean. There are conventional column stalks, but there are no other switches on the dash. A joystick is set into the right-hand side of the driver’s seat to select forward and reverse motion. All other vehicle functions are accessed by two central digital screens. Small rubber balls called “pucks” that have a wide groove cut into them slot into troughs in the dashboard, doors, and center console and are seen as mobile cup holders or cell-phone rests.

Externally, the ‘pod appears to be from the urban battle-cruiser school of Japanese design—Nissan says the proportions hark back to rat rods of the 1950s, but that’s only the case if you’ve been doing hallucinogenic drugs—with a minimal greenhouse and massive slab sides. The pod-style headlamps are quite cool, however, and fitting with the pod theme.

The vehicle wears an EV badge on the side, indicating just how serious the company is about extending its range of electric vehicles beyond the Leaf. Will we see this vehicle make it? Unlikely, but a next-gen Cube, which is essentially a more spacious version of Nissan’s compact cars, would be a natch for electrification.

Tucked out of sight to most showgoers around the back of Nissan’s Paris-show stand was a white GT-R that looked familiar, but somehow different. That’s because it was the much-rumored mid-cycle freshening of Nissan’s hairiest car. We started talking to a PR rep for the firm and he was more evasive than a White House flack when the questioning got tricky.

So here’s what we gleaned. The GT-R gets some minor exterior changes, most notably a revised front bumper and grille, LED daytime running lights, a very shiny (optional) white paint job, and a bigger rear diffuser with enormous exhaust tips. The car we saw had a carbon-fiber rear spoiler, but that could be off a Spec V Japanese-market edition. Sexy new Rays wheels carry 255/40R20 front and 285/35R20 rear Bridgestones.

Mechanically, we know that the GT-R will get a slight power bump, certainly over the magic 500 PS number—or up to 493 hp in real, American terms. The suspension has been recalibrated, with new shocks and springs and thicker anti-roll bars, while there are supposedly dashboard supports to stiffen the body and a new strut brace made from carbon fiber and aluminum. The front brakes are slightly larger and the stability-control system has been retuned.

Inside, the GT-R we saw had a really tony quilted leather treatment, reputedly an M-spec high-grade trim that is a significant price bump over the standard GT-R. However Nissan decides to package this fancy leather, we wish that Chevy could come up with something as gorgeous on the Corvette.

This revised GT-R will go into production late this year in Japan, but won’t go on sale in the U.S. until well into 2011, making it a 2012 model.